Niemoeller redux: Global rape of human rights continues

Annie Machon is a former intel­li­gence officer for MI5, the UK Secur­ity Ser­vice, who resigned in the late 1990s to blow the whistle on the spies’ incom­pet­ence and crimes with her ex-partner, David Shayler.
Draw­ing on her var­ied exper­i­ences, she is now a pub­lic speaker, writer, media pun­dit, inter­na­tional tour and event organ­iser, polit­ical cam­paigner, and PR con­sult­ant.
She has a rare per­spect­ive both on the inner work­ings of gov­ern­ments, intel­li­gence agen­cies and the media, as well as the wider implic­a­tions for the need for increased open­ness and account­ab­il­ity in both pub­lic and private sectors.

Allow me to explain this current version. Regular readers will be
well aware of my horror at the global rape of basic human rights in the
West's fight against the ‘War on Terror’ since 9/11: the
kidnappings, the torture, the CIA presidentially-approved weekly
assassination lists, the drone bombings, the illegal wars etc.

All these measures have indeed targeted and terrorized the Muslim
community around the world. In the UK I have heard many stories
of British Muslims wary of attending a family event such as a
wedding of their cousins in Pakistan or wherever, in case they
get snatched, tortured or drone bombed.

Now it appears that even British citizens who choose to donate to
UK charities offering humanitarian relief in war zones such as
Syria can be arrested under counter-terrorism laws.

Moazzam Begg, the director of Cage (the UK NGO campaigning about the
community impact of the war on terror) was again seized last week. As I have written before, this is a man who has already
experienced the horrors of Bagram Airbase and Guantanamo. When he
was released he became a campaigner for others in the same plight
and set up the Cage campaign which has gained quite some traction
over the last few years.

Over a year ago he visited Syria on a fact-finding mission,
investigating those who had been summarily detained and tortured
in the conflict. Last December he had his passport seized on spurious grounds He wrote
about this trip quite openly, and yet now, a year on, has been
arrested and charged with ‘training
terrorists and fundraising’ in Syria. This is a high-profile
campaigner who operates in the full glare of the media. How
credulous does one have to be to believe that Begg, after all his
experiences and running this campaign, is now involved in
‘terrorism’? Really, anyone?

Since then other people involved in British charities offering
aid to the displaced peoples of Syria have also been scooped up. But this is just affecting the
British Muslim community, right? There's ‘no smoke without
fire’, and it does not impinge the lives of most people in
the UK, so there has been no widespread outcry....

....so nobody speaks up.

Then we have the ongoing ‘War on Whistleblowers’ that I
have discussed extensively. This affects every sector of society in every
country, but most seriously affects whistleblowers emerging from
central government, the military and the intelligence agencies.
They are the ones most likely to witness the most heinous
crimes, and
they are the ones automatically criminalized by secrecy laws.

This is most apparent in the UK, where the Official Secrets Act
(1989) specifically criminalizes whistleblowing, and in the USA,
where President Obama has invoked the 1917 Espionage Act against
whistleblowers more times than all other presidents combined over
the last century. If that is not a ‘War on
Whistleblowers’, I don't know what is.

This, of course, is a paranoid over-reaction to the work of
WikiLeaks, and the brave actions of Chelsea Manning and Edward
Snowden. This is what Obama's government deems to be the insider
threat. Yet
it is only through greater transparency that we can operate as
informed citizens; it is only through greater accountability that
we can hope to obtain justice. And in this era, when we are
routinely lied into illegal wars, what could be more important?

But intelligence and military whistleblowers are rare,
specialized and easy to stigmatize as the ‘other’ and
now, the insider threat - not quite of the normal
world. The issues they disclose can seem a bit remote, not linked
to most people's daily experiences....

....so nobody speaks up.

But now to my third revamped line of the Pastor Niemoeller poem:
the activists or, to use current police terminology, the
‘domestic extremists’. This, surely, does impinge on
more people's experience of life. If you want to go out and
demonstrate against a war, in support of Occupy, for the
environment, whatever, you are surely exercising your democratic
rights as citizens, right?

Er, well no, not these days. I have written before about how activists can be
criminalized and even deemed to be terrorists by the police
(think London Occupy in 2011 here). I'm thinking of
the ongoing British undercover cop scandal which continues to
rumble on.

For those of you outside the UK, this is a scandal that erupted
in 2010. There is was a section of secret police which was
infiltrated into activist groups under secret identities to live
the life, report back, and even potentially work as enablers or
agents provocateurs. As the scandal has grown it appears that some of
these cops fathered children with their targets and spied on the
grieving families of murder victims.

This sounds like the East German Stasi, but was happening in the
UK in the last couple of decades. A government enquiry has just
been announced and many old cases against activists will be
reviewed to see if tarnished ‘evidence’ was involved in the
trials and subsequent convictions.

But again this does not affect most people beyond the activist
community....

....so nobody speaks up.

Now, people who have always assumed they have certain protections
because of their professions, such as lawyers and journalists,
are also being caught in this dragnet. Julian Assange's lawyer,
Jennifer Robinson, discovered she was on a
flight watch list a few years ago. More recently Jesselyn Radack, human rights director of the
US Government Accountability Project and legal adviser to Edward
Snowden, was stopped and interrogated at the UK border.

And just this week a Dutch investigative journalist, Brenno de Winter, was unable to do his job since his
name was placed on alert in all national government buildings.
The police accused him of hacking-related crimes and burglary.
They had to retract this when the smear campaign came to light.

Brenno has made his name by freedom of information requests from
the Dutch public sector and his subsequent investigations, for
which he was named Dutch Journalist of the Year in 2011. Hardly
subversion, red in tooth and claw, but obviously now deemed to be
an existential, national security threat to the Netherlands.

Nor is this a Dutch problem - we have seen this in the US, where
journalists such as James Risen and Barrett Brown
have been hounded merely for doing their jobs, and the Glenn
Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was detained at London
Heathrow airport under counter-terrorism laws.

Journalists, who always somewhat complacently thought they had
special protections in Western countries, are being increasingly
targeted when trying to report on issues such as privacy,
surveillance, whistleblower disclosures and wars.

Only a few are being targeted now, but I hope these cases will be
enough to wake the rest up, while there is still the chance for
them to take action....

....before there is nobody left to speak up for us.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.